Who we are
Started in 2019, we are devoted to improving measurement in organisations.
This is central to our mission to help organisations become more healthy, adaptable and human.
We see measurement as an important part of an organisation’s culture, something that can both constrain and liberate the potential of humans to work together.
Our story
Adaptive Evaluation was born in 2019 when organisational expert Alex Stol was asked to evaluate the progress and effectiveness of a culture intervention in an organisation.
Delving into the project, Alex found familiar measurement problems - ones she’d encountered in her previous 25 years working in leadership development and organisational culture.
In a nutshell, current dominant forms of measurement were too reductionistic. They couldn’t capture crucial elements of culture that needed to be tracked. What was needed were more comprehensive and holistic ways of measuring that could account for the interrelationships and complexities of the organisation.
To develop these ideas, Alex tapped into a global network of thinkers and collaborators, particularly in the fields of evaluation and systems thinking.
She also drew on a growing movement that recognises the mechanistic constraints we have created in our work environments and wants to put the ‘human’ back into organisations.
By 2021, with Mark joining Adaptive Evaluation, we were developing ways to tackle the tracking, monitoring and evaluating of complex culture changes. It also became clear that the challenge was not just about forms of measurement – but about how people in organisations think about and use measurement. We were struck by the many faulty assumptions underlying its application.
As we began working with clients, we found simple but powerful ways to help people clarify what they were trying to do with measurement. We noticed this sparked people’s curiosity about their organisation and their practices. To our surprise, we realised re-thinking measurement was a powerful way to build a learning organisation. It was a culture intervention in itself.
Dr Alex Stol
Founder and Director
Dr Mark Scillio
Director
Alex is an organisational practitioner with over 25 years of experience in senior roles in large organisations, professional services, and smaller strategic consultancies.
She is passionate about leadership development, organisational culture, and how evaluation and measurement can support these areas. This pursuit has shaped her career and was the focus of her PhD.
In the 1990s, Alex worked as an economist, then as an organisational psychologist in the 2000s, both roles deeply rooted in scientific measurement. Finding these perspectives insufficient for today's complex challenges, she now draws on systems thinking, complexity theory and powerful frameworks for culture and adult development.
Adaptive Evaluation combines Alex’s expertise in culture transformation with her passion for measurement. It brings together strategies for complex culture change with methods to help people more effectively track and measure initiatives.
Mark is a facilitator, educator, and researcher with 30 years of experience in organisations, government (state and federal), universities, and the community sector.
As a business thinker and social scientist, he draws on approaches from psychology, sociology, philosophy, ecology, and the fields of evaluation and measurement.
Mark has written on adapting to the future of work and helping people find personal meaning through their careers. His book Making Career Stories explores how individuals navigate work in uncertain times.
Mark excels in helping people learn and thrive in groups, whether in community settings or executive teams. He empowers individuals to draw on their innate wisdom to develop themselves and each other, and to tackle the complex strategic and human challenges facing organisations.
Our approach to measurement
By grounding their work in the complexity of systems change, understanding the critical role of culture in supporting an organization’s development and growth, and the importance of measurement and evaluation through the collection of meaningful data in support of decision making and action, Drs. Stol and Scillio, are poised to have a significant impact on the field. Their belief in the inherent value of learning and collaboration are hallmarks of their practice.
- Hallie Preskill, USA. Former Managing Director at FSG, Former Professor, and Past President of the American Evaluation Association
We have been undertaking a comprehensive culture transformation for over three years and have learnt many lessons about what makes effective transformation. The outcomes mapping work provided by Adaptive Evaluation has been extremely valuable in supporting this need. It is an engaging process and I would certainly recommend their approach to bring efficiencies to large scale transformations.
An important part of the success of the work Alex and Mark do is they are able to take very complex theoretical ideas around complexity and systems and apply them pragmatically due to their lived experience as leadership and culture practitioners who know the practical day to day issues around culture transformation.
- Kate Scarafiotti, Head of Organisational Change, Hydro Tasmania